Fabric IQ: The shared context layer for AI agents and real-time applications
AI agents fail without context-rich data. A June 2026 Forrester report puts it plainly: "No matter how well modeled, data without the context provided by shared semantics and mature ontologies will fall short for agentic AI use cases."
Microsoft's answer at Build 2026 is Fabric IQ, now generally available as the shared context layer sitting at the heart of the Microsoft data stack.
The architecture is what makes this interesting from a graph and semantics perspective. Fabric IQ is built on three connected layers:
Unified data in OneLake (structured, unstructured, event, and graph), business intelligence through semantic models (business meaning defined once, applied everywhere), and operational intelligence through ontologies and real-time signals.
Ontologies are doing the heavy lifting here. They model the entities, relationships, rules, and constraints that semantic models were never designed to represent.
According to a Microsoft-controlled A/B study, ontology-grounded agents produced 2.2x more excellent responses, a 4.5x win rate in side-by-side comparisons, and a 30% reduction in tool calls. Without ontology grounding, agents explore the wrong paths. With it, they start with the map.
Graph in Fabric is also now generally available, built as a relationship-first data modeling engine natively on OneLake.
It runs on GQL (ISO/IEC 39075), supports billions of relationships with sharded scale-out processing, and includes natural-language-to-GQL for non-technical users.
Paired with Ontology, Graph is the execution layer that lets AI agents reason consistently across connected business domains, from supply chain and fraud to customer intelligence and cybersecurity.
The connective tissue extends further: Ontology MCP support lets external agents and tools connect through the Model Context Protocol. Foundry IQ agents can use the ontology as a governed knowledge source. Copilot Studio can call it as a tool.
Define business context once in Fabric IQ, reuse it across the full spectrum of agent experiences.
By Yitzhak Kesselman and Chafia Aouissi
Fabric IQ: The shared context layer for AI agents and real-time applications
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Fabric IQ: The semantic layer powering trusted AI agents at enterprise scale
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